For
nearly one and a half centuries, the cause of the most notorious
fire in U.S. history has been a source of “heated” controversy. Some
researchers suggest that a disintegrating comet ignited the blaze.
But the electrical theorists say that evidence most often ignored
offers the best clues.

“With the heat increased the wind, which came howling across the
prairie, until at last there arose a perfect hurricane. Mighty
flakes of fire, hot cinders, black, stifling smoke, were driven
fiercely at the people, and amid the terrible excitement hundreds of
them had their very clothes burned off their backs, as they stood
there watching with tearful eyes the going down of so many houses”.
-- James Goodsell's History of the Great Chicago Fire, October 8, 9, and 10,
Published 1871 by J.H. and C.M. Goodsell.

Sunday evening, October 8, 1871 marked the beginning of one of the
most devastating fires in U.S. history. Legend has it that “The
Great Chicago Fire” resulted from an agitated cow kicking over a
lantern in “Mrs O’Leary’s barn”. The dry leaves and parched wood of
Illinois in early autumn were the perfect kindling for a wildfire,
and the fire spread with extraordinary rapidity, consuming homes and
buildings, leaping from rooftop to rooftop with the speed of a
locomotive. Between October 8 and 10, an estimated 350 people
perished. The fire destroyed the homes of up to one-third of the
city's population, about 1,600 stores, 60 factories, and 28 public
buildings. Four square miles of the
city burned to the ground.

Contrary to popular folklore, the Chicago fire is not the worst in
U.S. history. It was not even the worst to occur on October 8
that year. The same evening—in fact, at the same time, about
9:30—a fierce wildfire struck in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, over 200 miles to
the north of Chicago, destroying the town and a dozen other
villages. Estimates of those killed range upward from 1200 to 2500
in a single night. It was not the Chicago fire but the simultaneous
“Peshtigo Fire” that was the deadliest in U.S. history.

And there is more. On the same evening, across Lake
Michigan, another fire also wreaked havoc. Though smaller fires had
been burning for some time—not unusual under the reported
conditions—the most intense outburst appears to have erupted
simultaneously with the Chicago and Peshtigo fires. The blaze is
said to have then burned for over a month, consuming over 2,000,000
acres and killing at least 200.

Concerning the Michigan
outburst, it is reported that numerous fires endangered towns across
the state. The city of Holland was destroyed by fire and in Lansing
flames threatened the agricultural college. In Thumb, farmers fled
an inferno that some newspapers dubbed, "The Fiery Fiend." Reports
say that fires threatened Muskegon, South Haven, Grand Rapids,
Wayland, reaching the outskirts of Big Rapids. A steamship passing
the Manitou Islands reported they were on fire.

There can be no doubt that weather conditions at the time favored
wildfires. But never before, and never since, has the U.S. seen
such wildly destructive simultaneousconflagrations.
This “coincidence”, combined with many unusual phenomena reported by
eyewitnesses, has led some to conclude that an extraordinary force,
one not of the earth, was a more likely “arson” than either a
misbehaving cow or a regional drought.

In 1883, Ignatius Donnelly, author of Ragnarok: the Rain of Fire
and Gravel, suggested that in early historic times our Earth
suffered great catastrophes from cometary intruders. To this claim
he added: “There is reason to believe that the present generation
has passed through the gaseous prolongation of a comet's tail, and
that hundreds of human beings lost their lives”. He was referring
to the conflagration of 1871.

Is there plausible
evidence that a comet may have caused the Chicago fire and its
regional counterparts? In 1985, Mel Waskin, who had earlier
discovered Donnelly’s work, published a book, Mrs.
O’Leary’s Comet, suggesting that a comet did indeed spark
the October 8th fires. More recently, Robert Wood, a physicist and
aeronautical engineer formerly with Douglas Aircraft and McDonnell
Douglas, gained attention from the Discovery Channel and other media
for proposing the same idea.

The proponents of the
cometary explanation cite many fascinating details confirmed by eye
witness reports: the descent of fire from the heavens, a great
“tornado” of fire rushing across the landscape and tearing buildings
from their foundations, descending balls of fire, a rain of red
dust, great explosions of wind accompanied by blasts of thunder,
buildings exploding into flame where no fire was burning, and a good
deal more. Some of the parallels with the later
Tunguska
event are impossible to miss.

It seems that the
records of the conflagration hold many clues that are almost never
mentioned in scientific discussion of the Chicago fire. Over time
the clues have virtually disappeared. They have disappeared because
they are not meaningful to minds conditioned by popular ideas about
how the “Chicago fire” started and what is “scientifically”
possible. Within these habits of perception, the most important
evidence will often go unnoticed or unremembered.